ESPN threatens to take Tata Sky to court

TNNJun 6, 2008, 12.27am IST

NEW DELHI: After a tiff with its DTH rival Dish TV over its new pricing strategy, Tata Sky is now headed for a legal battle with ESPN Star Sports. The sports broadcaster has accused Tata Sky of blocking its signals on its platform and has threatened to take a legal recourse against the DTH operator.

"It is extremely unfair on a DTH player to solve a commercial dispute by blocking our signals on its platform. We have very important sports series like Euro 2008 and French Open going on and the two million Tata Sky subscribers can't get our signals," ESPN India MD R C Venkatiesh said. He said ESPN Star plans to move to TDSAT and is also looking at taking the DTH player to the Delhi HC. Euro 2008 will kick off on Saturday.

Tata Sky — which recently removed ESPN, Star Sports and Star Cricket from its basic bouquet to create an add-on sports package that costs Rs 40 per month — on its part maintained that the company is only following TRAI's recommendations. In fact, the DTH operator accused the sports broadcaster of not toeing the TRAI guidelines.

"Almost all broadcasters other than ESPN have accepted the TRAI guidelines that recommend that content prices should be made available to DTH platforms on an a la carte basis to give subscribers more flexibility. We are taking it up with TRAI to take sternest possible action against ESPN for their violation of the regulations," Tata Sky managing director Vikram Kaushik said.

"We as a broadcaster are very flexible on our pricing, however the platform is resorting to arm twisting tactics, which is not accepted," ESPN said. It also accused Tata Sky of fleecing and misleading consumers by increasing prices and eroding their brand equity by 'unilaterally and arbitrarily' discontinuing them.